I've renamed most of the various lists of links found at the bottom of this blog page.

Garrulus' Travels — A half-assed attempt at a play on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

For those who know of my penchant for grammatical correctness (or at least my attempts to be grammatically correct), I use Garrulus' instead of Garrulus's because: 1) Garrulus is Latin, and 2) it's ancient. In fact, it is the Latin form of "garrulous," but I don't use it in the sense of that word's definition (excessively or tiresomely talkative). It's meant to be a play on my first name. Saith Strunk and White:

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names [ending] in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake.

Garrulus may not end in -es or -is, but since it is ancient and since it is deliberately being misused as a noun, instead of being properly used as an adjective, I've chosen to form this possessive singular by adding only an apostrophe and omitting the s. Besides, omitting that final s preserves the admittedly stretched alliteration between Gulliver's Travels and Garrulus' Travels.

Perpetually Peregrine — The original title of this list was For Itinerant Souls. That was far too drab and cliché, and I longed for something better. Perpetually Peregrine is not only better, it, too, has some lovely alliteration. It's also rather descriptive of my life. Peregrine, if you didn't know, is Latin, coming from peregrinus, meaning "foreign," and peregre, meaning "abroad." In English, peregrine means "wandering," "travelling," "migratory." I've lived a perpetually peregrine existence, thus the title for this list of links.

Colloquiare Colloquially — Originally titled For the Colloquial of Heart, then renamed For Colloquial Hearts, I wanted something less romantic (as well as to avoid the cliché "colloquially speaking") and, after a little research, settled on Colloquiare Colloquially. Colloquiare is Italian, meaning "to talk" or "to converse." Thus, the new name is not only alliterative, it also means, quite literally, "to converse/speak colloquially." The links found in this list bear that out. You could say that I still ended up with "colloquially speaking" as the title for this list, but it's absolutely not cliché.

Multilinguality — Twisted of Tongue was the original name for this list. The problem, however, was that it was too close to being cliché ("tongue twister"), and it was also too prosaic. I played around with several ideas using different versions of lingua, the Latin for "language" or "tongue." And then, in the process of my research, I came across the word "multilinguality" in the Wikipedia article First language. Plus, it's thoroughly Latin, as even the multi- prefix has a Latin root. It fit, it was unusual, so it stays.

Ars Gratia — Arts & Artists was the name I first used for this list. Sticking with the Latin theme that had developed, I settled on Ars Gratia. Ar is the Latin for "art" and ars the Latin for "arts." Ars Gratia is a phrase actually used in English, meaning "art for art's sake" or "for the sake of art."

News-Speak — Newspeak (unhyphenated, and the original title for this list) is actually a word invented by George Orwell, used in his book 1984. It is the fictional language of his imagined future. There is even a Wikipedia article on the subject. Given that modern news is sometimes little more than propaganda, depending on the source, News-Speak only seemed a fitting title for this list of news sources. It's a play on Orwell's word. You'll even see another play on this in the title for the quotes from writers, which has changed from Writers Speak . . . to Writer-Speak . . . . Thus, it's only fitting that the first quote posted in this new template should be from George Orwell.

If you're new here and are curious about this blog's title, here's a brief explanation:

Garrulus is simply a play on my first name, Gary. The original title for this blog was Garrulous Grumbling, but then it went through a name change and became Garrulus Grommeler. Why grommeler?Grommeler is Middle French for "to grumble."

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Garrulus Grommeler

Born and raised an Air Force BRAT, Garrulus has been to 18 countries and U.S. territories on three continents, as well as to 39 of the 50 states. He has lived in places as diverse as Okinawa, Japan; Biloxi, Mississippi; Bangkok, Thailand; and Bloxham, England (in Oxfordshire, near Banbury).